Someone pulled him over onto his back and wrested the ball away from him. For a moment, with closed eyes, he fought for breath. Then, conscious of a numbing pain in one arm and of a sound that beat upon his ears like breakers on a beach, he opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was a shock of red hair, then something brown and dripping, and, when the sponge was gone, leaving him gasping and half-blinded, a white-painted post so near that he could have stretched out his arm and touched it. Slowly his gaze traveled up the post until it found a bar set at right angles with it. He smiled satisfiedly. “It’s—over, isn’t it?” he asked weakly.
“A yard over,” answered Andy’s voice. “And now you’ll come off.”
“No, I must kick the goal,” Kendall demurred.
“Here, boys, get him out of this,” was Andy’s reply, and Kendall found himself being lifted to his feet.
“All right,” he muttered. “I can walk. Let me go, you fellows.”
But when they let him go he staggered and reeled and Andy had to hold him up. After that he went off to the bench quite docilely between two substitutes, regarding the faces that forever got in his way, faces with blazing eyes and wide-open mouths, through a haze of perplexity. Somehow, there was a great deal of noise going on!
Presently, blanketed, his arm once more in a sling, he was leaning back against the stand, quite satisfied with the world. From where he sat, quite alone save for Andy, he could see only the backs of the crowd, a crowd gone suddenly silent. He knew then that someone, probably Fales, was preparing to try a goal, and would have got up and gone to see had not Andy pushed him gently back into his seat.
“Be easy, can’t you?” he grumbled. “How do you think that wrist is going to get well if you don’t take care of it? If I’d had my way you’d never gone back there to-day. It’s a wonder you didn’t snap it out again.”
“All right, Andy,” replied Kendall happily. “I just wanted to see if we’d get the goal.”
“No matter if we do or we don’t,” said Andy, snapping his bag shut. “We beat ’em anyway, don’t we?”